The Worldwide Web (“Web”) is an open-ended digital information repository into which new information is continually posted and read by different bodies of “stakeholders” that are each involved with Web information provisioning and use to varying degrees. The information on the Web can, and often does, originate from diverse sources, including authors, editors, bloggers, collaborators, and outside contributors commenting, for instance, through a Web log, or “blog.” Such diversity suggests a potentially expansive topical index, which, like the underlying information, continuously grows and changes.
Topically organizing an open-ended information source, like the Web, can facilitate information discovery and retrieval, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application, entitled “System and Method for Performing Discovery of Digital Information in a Subject Area,” Ser. No. 12/190,552, filed Aug. 12, 2008, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. Books have long been organized with topical indexes. However, constraints on codex form limit the size and page counts of books, and hence index sizes. In contrast, Web materials lack physical bounds and can require more extensive topical organization to accommodate the full breadth of subject matter covered and to satisfactorily address the needs of different Web stakeholders.
One body of stakeholders, information producers and, in particular, blog authors or “bloggers,” often write about multiple topics, yet each blogger's writings are ordinarily combined under a single Web site. Keeping a blog Web site well-organized increases the effort necessary to maintain the site and detracts from the raison d'être for blogging. Moreover, bloggers typically organize their Web sites by date, rather than by topic, and a minority of bloggers tag their articles by keyword or topic. Article tagging, though, entails extra work for bloggers, and when new tags that describe old previously-tagged topics emerge, updating existing content under the new tags can be tedious, time-consuming, and often impracticable. Additionally, bloggers frequently embed hyperlinks to high-quality blogs on the same topic that have been written by other bloggers. Linking blog Web sites increases Web traffic for all bloggers whose Web sites are linked, yet each blogger has to manually maintain each hyperlink, which can become stale if a hyperlink to any of the linked Web sites change or become outdated.
Another body of stakeholders, information seekers, include those online readers or users that expend significant amounts of time trying to find bloggers with the best information. Generally, sifting through each of the articles written by every blogger to find the best articles on a particular topic can require considerable user effort. Thus, some users employ blog reading tools that support voting on articles by Web users at-large, yet these tools are often disorganized and not supported by communities of on-topic and like-minded users. Also, the quality and usefulness of the voting are frequently uneven or inconsistent. Other users use search tools to find topically-relevant blog articles. However, since the users may not even know the proper search terms required to find the new articles, search tools are not particularly effective for keeping up on new articles in specific topics. And even when new articles are found, users are often challenged in effectively sharing the perspectives gained through their efforts.
A third body of stakeholders, companies offering products and services over the Web, generally try to match their advertisements to topically-related Web sites through targeted advertising, which is a cost-effective alternative to arranging advertising with every blogger in their industry. For instance, Ad Sense, offered by Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif., places advertisements on different parts of a Web page as determined by auction. Advertisers bid for key words that are used to match online advertisements, or advertisements are associated with general search queries that are matched against the contents of Web pages. However, advertising opportunities are still missed when information on a Web page fails to trigger key word targeting logic to propose an appropriate advertisement, and where inherently ambiguous terms lack sufficient context for differentiating between different markets to properly target online advertising.
A fourth body of stakeholders, social indexing Web sites, are among many of the various types of Web sites competing for user attention. In general, a Web site is reached either by a user specifying the Web site's hyperlink, that is, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) explicitly, or by a Web site being selected through search results generated by a search engine. This challenge to being discovered by users creates potential challenges, particularly for a new Web site or a Web site with a relationship with a competitive search engine provider.
Accordingly, there is a need for an approach to enabling each of the foregoing stakeholders to facilitate efficient Web information creation, sharing, and advertising.